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2001 White House shooting
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The 2001 White House shooting was an incident at the perimeter fence of the South Lawn of the White House, on February 7, 2001, two weeks after the first inauguration of George W. Bush. Robert W. Pickett, a disgruntled Internal Revenue Service ex-employee from Indiana, fired a handgun and was shot by Secret Service agents after a 10-minute standoff.
Robert W. Pickett, an Evansville, Indiana accountant who was described as 47 years old at the time of the shooting, briefly attended West Point, and had been employed by the IRS but had left under pressure in the 1980s and in 2001 was still in litigation with the IRS over his job. He had also sued his union, the National Treasury Employees Union, and his IRS boss. Pickett had a history of mental illness, including six hospitalizations and two suicide attempts, but no criminal record. In 2000, he bought a handgun in Evansville after an instant background check. On January 19, 2001, the federal court had given Pickett 30 days to show why his remaining lawsuit should not be dismissed.
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